Search focuses on southern Afghanistan

A convoy of trucks carry surrendering Taliban fighters across the Bangi Bridge on the Konduz front line on Saturday.

SUMMARY:

U.S. forces are searching for Taliban leaders and Osama bin Laden around the Afghan cities of Kandahar and Jalalabad, the U.S. commander in the region said Tuesday. Meanwhile, Afghan groups gathered in Germany to hammer out a framework for a post-Taliban government in Afghanistan.

UPDATE:

Gen. Tommy Franks, the chief of the U.S. Central Command, said Tuesday U.S. and allied intelligence sources have led coalition forces to pay "very close attention" to the areas surrounding Kandahar and Jalalabad. But Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld noted those areas were not the only places the U.S.-led coalition is looking for bin Laden. (Full story)

Author Larry Goodson said the caves and tunnels of southern Afghanistan are unlikely to be destroyed strictly by aerial attack and could allow Taliban troops and al Qaeda operatives to move long distances without surfacing. (Full story)

Afghan groups meeting in Germany are discussing a plan for a two-year period of interim government that would lead to a constitution and a broad-based, post-Taliban government. A U.N. spokesman said Tuesday the delegates plan to spend three to five days working on the plan and hope to achieve an agreement in that period. (Full story)

Northern Alliance troops, along with U.S. and British special forces, fought Tuesday to snuff out a small pocket of resistance following a weekend uprising of Taliban prisoners outside Mazar-e Sharif. "There were 30 to 40 hard-core people still on the inside, and it is a matter of rooting them out," Franks said. (Full story)

Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh met with President Bush Tuesday and is expected to sign an antiterrorist agreement covering the exchange of intelligence information with Washington. The October 2000 bombing of the destroyer USS Cole in Yemen was blamed on bin Laden. (Full story)

VIDEO

Former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani told CNN's
Christiane Amanpour that he has agreed to a meeting of ethnic Afghan
groups (November 20)

The Taliban: A group of Islamic fundamentalists, mainly from
Afghanistan's Pashtun ethnic group, which is the country's largest
ethnic group. The Taliban that gained control of most of the country by
1997 and instituted an extreme form of Islamic law. (Click here for more)

Northern Alliance: A group of former mujahedeen fighters, mainly
from minority ethnic groups that oppose the Taliban. (Click here for more)

George Robertson: NATO secretary-general and former British defense
minister. (Click here for more)